Here are recommendations about how the next version of the law known as No Child Left Behind can be improved to boost student achievement. The list doesn’t quite resemble the Obama administration’s plan for the new law.

The Onion, American’s Finest News Source, reports this amazing story: According to bewildered and contrite legislators, a major budgetary mix-up this week inadvertently provided the nation’s public schools with enough funding and resources to properly educate students.

Alfie Kohn looks at parent surveys conducted by schools, and concludes that “nce you start noticing the implications of what’s being asked, these parent surveys come to seem not merely less useful but positively insidious.”

Here’s the letter from assessment experts urging the New York Regents not to approve an assessment system that links student standard test scores to teacher and principal evaluation. The Regents inored the evidence that such systems are unstable and went ahead anyway.

Federal and state policies have contributed to taking away much of the autonomy teachers once enjoyed in the classroom, as other professionals enjoy. Here are the 10 things needed to happen for teachers to reclaim their professional independence.

A new report by a presidentially appointed committee on arts education makes the case that art education notonly helps young people find their voice but also is an effective tool in improving student achievement in other subjects and helps the private sector too.

When I saw that Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, was going to be one of five members of a school reform Town Hall discussion, I assumed that the issue of poverty and how it affects students would be on the agenda. I was wrong.

If the country wants more students going into science, math, engineering and technology, it must properly train more STEM teachers. Here, the former president of Teachers College at Columbia University explains how.

A library media educator in Los Angeles writes a powerful, first-person account of hearings being held by the Los Angeles Unified School District for educators who have received a Reduction in Force notice and are trying to keep their jobs.

A new report says that three-quarters of American adults say college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. And most of more than 1,000 college presidents surveyed said that freshmen are coming to campus less prepared than kids were 10 years ago.

Policymakers assume that micro- or macro-decisions driven by data will improve student achievement just like those productivity increases and profits major corporations accrue from using data to make decisions. But the evidence isn’t there yet to support it.

An educator writes that a well-designed and well-taught online course can meet students’ needs — and is the wave of the future. The challenge is to avoid poor quality online curriculum, inadequately prepared teachers, and students without the requisite skills for success.

National Education Association leaders have decided to ask their legislative body in July to formally endorse President Obama for reelection. The decision was not unanimous because of policy differences.

A satirical Onion-esque education newsletter writes about a stunning development in Newark: A Russian billionaire has put in a bid for the school system that surpasses the $100 million Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently donated.

Five students at the University of California at Los Angeles and two geography professors actually came close to figuring out where Osama bin Laden was hiding for more than two years before he was killed by U.S. special forces.

Education historian Diane Ravitch writes about the latest development in the education world, including the announcement that the Gates Foundation, together with Pearson, will write a new K-12 curriculum.

A prominent mathematician says its time for mathematicians to speak out against the value-added assessment models increasingly being used to evaluate and pay teachers and explains the dangers of the practice.

Nearly 4,000 D.C. schoolteachers, parents and others have signed a petition urging federal officials to investigate suspicions of potential cheating on standardized tests during the tenure of former chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan wasn’t able to make it as scheduled, but a handful of his top staff members spent some time on Thursday talking to the visiting Teachers of the Year for 2011 about school reform, and what wasn’t said was as striking as what was.

Only a tiny percentage of American students in grades 4, 8 and 12 achieved superior performance in civics on the 2010 test that is often called the “nation’s report card,” according to results released Wednesday. And there was little progress across the grades.

Maryland teacher Michelle Shearer, the newly named 2011 national Teacher of the Year, talks in an interview about the teaching profession and the direction education “reform” has taken. She’s got some issues with it.

Veteran educator Anthony Cody argues that just as there was a housing bubble that burst in the United States, the education world is in the middle of a standardized testing bubble that will crash to Earth too.

A veteran educator writes about how the national attention received by a Maine district that spent $200,000 to buy iPads for kindergarteners when school budgets are being cut reveals not only a faith in technology but also the new, controversial academic demands in early education.